“Oh.” His brows tug inward and his lips thin. “How long?”
“Four days. He called out of the blue to tell me his family is having a gathering and his mom suggested it would be good to have Mia there.”
“His mom.”
“Yep.”
Greyson shakes his head. And in that one gesture he captures all my thoughts and feelings.
“Four days.”
“Yeah.”
“Our next four days off?”
Our. “Yeah.”
“That’s inconvenient for you. Did you have plans?”
“I did. We did. Lots of them.”
He nods.
The kitchen door to the bay opens. I instinctively step back from Greyson, even though there’s already a good yard between us.
Dustin comes into the bay. “Hey! What are you two talking about? Is it about dinner and how I wasn’t invited? You’re feeling bad, aren’t you, Hallie? Don’t worry. You can make it up to me. How’s this week?”
I laugh.
Greyson grumbles under his breath.
“We were actually talking about something I wanted to tell you about too,” I say.
Greyson looks a little shocked.
I smile assuringly at him. It’s time.
“I actually need to tell both you and Patrick something.”
Dustin sticks his head back through the kitchen door. “Yo. Patrick! Come out here. Hallie wants to tell us something.”
Greyson looks at me with a question written on his face—making sure today’s really the right day. I am emotional. But my whole point in not telling them was to wait until they accepted me onto the crew and included me as an equal. At some point, that happened. Maybe it was the pranks. Maybe it was the way I show up on calls. Maybe it was just a matter of time. But I’m one of them now. And I want them to know.
Patrick comes out. “What’s up?”
I preface my reveal by saying, “I feel weird not having said anything to you yet.”
Dustin guesses. “You’re a spy!”
I laugh. “Why would I be a spy? And what would I be spying on?”
“Maybe there’s a sleeper cell in Waterford,” Dustin says, his expression stone-cold serious.
I laugh harder. “There’s no easy way to say this.”
“Youarea spy! Man. I should have known. The way you bench press? That’s not real. Nope. That’s spy-level.”
“No. It’s …” I take a breath and spill the words in a tumble. “I have a daughter.”
